Differences Among Newspapers,Television,and Radio in their Contribution to Knowledge of the Contract with America

While communications research has shown a contribution to citizens' knowledge of political affairs from newspapers and television, it has not shown a similar contribution for radio. This study questions those findings, asking if researchers' failure to find a contribution to radio is due to inadequacies in sampling and measurement techniques. In this study, commuters were sampled and asked about their attention to media coverage of the Contract With America, a topic of heavy discussion on talk radio. The authors found that radio made as large a contribution to respondents' knowledge of this particular political issue as newspapers and television. They suggest future studies of learning about political affairs for media should include radio in their analysis.